


We Can't Leave Us Behind

by bella_my_clarke



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bellarke, F/M, Fluff, Healing, LOTS OF CHEEK KISSES, angst-fluff, bellarke canonverse, bellarke s4 sort of, cheek kisses, declarations, ignoring the world ending thing because eh, typical bellarke aka will ruin your life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 16:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7853146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bella_my_clarke/pseuds/bella_my_clarke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don’t blame you for that, not anymore. I understand why you had to leave. But it still hurt, Clarke. And I guess...I think your goodbye reminds me of how I felt. Of what it was like to lose you.”</p>
<p>“The kiss,” she says, eyes full of sudden realization. “You think when I kiss you, it means I’m going to leave you.”</p>
<p>Or: Bellamy has a lot of healing to do, one try at a time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Can't Leave Us Behind

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song Scars by James Bay (which is seriously bellarke af). Also, this includes a little Bina (Bellamy/Gina) so if you hate Gina for whatever reason, first of all wyd and second of all be warned of that.

There’s a gaping hole by Bellamy when he walks into Arkadia. At first it’s just the lack of a presence beside him, the hollow air where he’d expected to have a small, warm body, and then it’s everywhere. Every space seems unbearably empty because _she’s not in it._

The emptiness has filled him by the time they shut the gates behind him, uncertainly. He feels wrong, like his body has shifted and he longer fits inside his skin. In his mind the day goes a hundred different ways; a hundred different outcomes that might’ve ended with his partner beside him. What could he have done more? He had given all he had, sacrificed all he was, so she wouldn’t be alone, and now they both are. Is he just not enough?

Why is he never enough?

It’s Octavia who notices him first. She had been standing with Lincoln, who looked uncomfortable in the midst of so many sky people, but as soon as she sees him she hurries over.

“Bell?” she asks, worry clouding her eyes. “What is it? Where’s Clarke?”

His body feels numb at the mention of her name. “She’s not coming inside.”

Octavia’s eyebrows furrow; the beginning of heartbreak dots her expression. “What do you mean?”

“She couldn’t handle coming back after Mount Weather, so she left.” His voice is hollow, drifting between them like smoke.

“Bellamy....”

“She left me, O,” he whispers, and his voice breaks. “She left everyone. All our people....”

Octavia throws her arms around him, one hand cradling the back of his neck, murmuring, “Bellamy, I’m so sorry, Bell....”

He hugs her back, but the action is lifeless. All he can think about is Clarke’s arms around him, her lips on his cheek. Instead of warming him, the kiss had left him cold and fragile, and the memory already fills him with a dark sort of dread.

“I lost her,” he whispers in a faraway voice. Something cracks in his chest, piercing his heart, and emotion bleeds out of it; pieces of himself he will never get back.

Somehow, he doesn’t cry again. He doesn’t cry the whole way inside, Octavia a firm presence at his side to ease the ache; or when he tells Abby and she breaks down in front of him; or wading through the pitied glances and hands on his shoulder and condolences, as if she’s already dead. Bellamy’s eyes stay perfectly dry all the way up until the door closes behind his room, and then he sinks to the floor and he sobs.

His body curls over with the force of the tears and he scrubs at his cheek in an attempt to erase the mark she left, but all it does is bring the memory of her broken eyes crashing down on him in unrelenting waves. The weight of the future he must now face alone bears down on him, snapping his spine and fracturing his shoulder blades even as he accepts it.

_I bear it so they don’t have to,_ Clarke had said. But she had forgotten she wasn’t alone. She had forgotten Bellamy always carried her, and now he carries all of them.

-

There are so many things wrong he doesn’t realize this is one of them until Gina comes.

He’s no less broken from that day; there are still gaping wounds between the vertebrae in his back, underneath the dull beat of his heart, behind his eyelids. But Gina doesn’t seem to mind his brokenness, and she doesn’t look at him like he’s less for what he’s done and what he hasn’t, and she makes him, surprisingly, happy. Their relationship is a quiet one, full of cheeks cradled in hands and soft kisses and things he’s afraid to say. He’s determined not to break it; not to break her, too.

But one day he’s going off to a patrol, and she’s wishing him goodbye, and just when he’s starting to turn away her lips press quickly to his cheek. It’s only a second, but it’s enough—enough for the image of Clarke’s shaking face to rise up in front of him, for the sensations of her lips on his skin and his fingers clinging to strands of her hair to intermix with the raw feeling of loss and anger, like his insides are being scraped out with a spoon. He stumbles back, blindly, away from her touch, and only when he hears a frantic voice saying, “Bellamy? Bellamy, what is it?” does he manage to hook himself back onto reality and remember it’s Gina, not Clarke, he’s pulling away from.

When his vision clears, it’s immediately filled by Gina’s dark, concerned eyes. “What happened? Are you okay?”

He swallows hard, heart slamming against his ribcage in an attempt to break through. “It’s—Clarke—”

Gina stiffens, just slightly. She knows how sensitive of a subject this is. “Have you heard something?”

“No, no,” Bellamy says, shaking his head, and he’s not sure if it’s relief or concern or longing that takes control of his tone. Perhaps all of them. “But when she left...she kissed me on the cheek, to say goodbye. I thought I was over it, but....”

“It reminds you of that day,” she finishes. “You’ve associated it with Clarke leaving you.”

Numbly, Bellamy nods, still working to clear his mind of the burning thoughts. He resists the urge to touch his cheek.

“You miss her,” Gina says at last, her hands on his arms to steady him.

“I shouldn’t. I should hate her for leaving, never contacting us, barely even saying goodbye....”

“But you do, because you care about each other, and you were always together on the ground, and now you’re not.” She hugs him softly and puts her lips near his ear. “It’s okay to grieve.”

His hands are hesitant as they slide around her, and so is his voice. “She’s not dead.”

“Doesn’t matter. You lost her just the same.”

No one ever kisses his cheek for a long time after that.

-

He’s on the floor of his room, playing cards with Clarke, because despite everything she came back, and she _stayed_. And after Raven confirms ALIE was lying – “The reactors would’ve fallen apart ages ago, and besides, everything checks out” – staying finally means something...permanent.

“Go fish,” Clarke says, grinning, and his heart does a somersault.

“That’s the eighth time, Clarke. You’re definitely cheating.” He rolls his eyes, but when he grabs a card off the teetering pile there’s a smirk on his face.

“Maybe. But it’s your fault, really, letting me pick the game.”

“I still can’t believe you wanted to play go fish of all games. Were you worried I’d beat you in poker again? Run out of things to barter?”

“No, and...well, maybe.” She shrugs, growing softer. “I just haven’t played it in forever. Not since I was a kid.”

He can sense the nostalgia in her tone and tries to ease it by adding a story of his own. “I played some cards on Factory, and Octavia wanted to play, too, except we couldn’t get any of our own. So instead we used the scrap fabric our mom couldn’t use and drew pictures on them and played our own version of the games. When she got bored of that, I’d give her a piggy back and pretend we were in a jungle, or a desert, or an old castle.”

“You’re a good brother, Bellamy,” Clarke says. She’s smiling and her tone is light, happy, but it stirs something heavy in his chest.

“I tried to be.” He looks down, not wanting to see her reaction. _But I failed._

There’s a beat of silence before Clarke moves. She rests her hand on his forearm gently, rubbing her thumb over the skin—he feels it before he sees it, due to the tears starting to cloud his vision. They come more often now; perhaps because with the world coming to a standstill, he finally has time to grieve, or perhaps because Clarke makes him feel like he deserves to.

“You are,” Clarke insists, and he can tell she’s trying to catch his gaze. He won’t look up.

“Tell that to Octavia, if you ever see her again,” he says bitterly, and he’s starting to shake. Almost two months without word from her after she left him in the throne room, Pike’s blood dripping from her sword in a trail behind her. He knows she’s alive, but it’s not enough.

He misses his little sister, no matter what she’s done.

“Octavia was wrong; don’t you see that? She lashed out and now she’s hiding from what she did.” There’s definitely spite in Clarke’s tone, and he remembers how furious she was when he admitted Octavia had beat him, how she had looked like she wanted to march across the world to find his sister just to scream at her, but instead had just held him against her, shaking. “Other people care about you, Bellamy. _I_ care about you. Octavia doesn’t have to be your whole world anymore.”

“For so long, it was my sister, my responsibility. And now that she’s gone....”

“I know.” Her other hand comes up to his face and wipes away his tears, slowly. “But I’ll be here if you need me.”

_I always need you,_ he thinks, but he doesn’t get the chance to say it because at that moment Clarke leans in and presses her lips to his cheek.

Memories cut off his vision in waves, and he flinches.

Immediately Clarke pulls away, and though it takes a few moments for him to screw up the courage to look at her, he can feel her embarrassment right away. Her cheeks are enflamed and her eyes are wide and he wishes so badly he could take it back, lean into her instead of pulling away, let her know everything’s okay. But it isn’t, and he can’t, so he just stares.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—” Clarke’s stumbling over her words already, and she lifts her hand from his arm awkwardly as if she’d forgotten it was still there. “I shouldn’t have done that, it was stepping over my boundaries, I just wanted—”

“Clarke.” He says her name like a question, a request, and she finally meets his gaze properly. She looks so unsure, and the fact she’s _apologizing_ makes him ache. “It’s fine.”

“You flinched,” she says in argument.

“Not because of _you,_ ” he says incredulously, then pauses. “Well, sort of.”

“Sort of? How can it _sort of_ be because of me?”

Bellamy swallows. Secretly he’d hoped there would never be a need to tell Clarke about his problem, but he’d rather confide in her about it then let her think she was overstepping bounds or some nonsense like that. “After we beat Mount Weather,” he starts, not sure of his words, “when you left me at Camp Jaha...it was like someone had scraped out all my insides. Like I had lost an essential piece of who I was and had no way to get it back.”

“Bellamy....” Clarke murmurs, her voice cracking, but he doesn’t let her finish. He needs to get through this.

“And I don’t blame you for that, not anymore. I understand why you had to leave. But it still _hurt,_ Clarke. And I guess...I think your goodbye reminds me of how I felt. Of what it was like to lose you.”

“The kiss,” she says, eyes full of sudden realization. “You think when I kiss you, it means I’m going to leave you.”

He works hard not to dwell too much on the word _kiss._ “It’s not just you. Back when Gina was still here, the same thing happened. And then she...I don’t mean it. I wish I wouldn’t react this way. But I do.”

Clarke’s eyes soften. “You don’t have to apologize to me. I want you to be happy, all right? I never want to make you feel uncomfortable. From now on I’ll check with you, okay? Before I do anything that might cross lines.”

_From now on,_ Bellamy thinks, but he pushes it aside before the thought can go from curious to giddy. “Okay.”

She pauses, then reaches out, her hands hovering just inches above his own. “Can I?” He nods, only able to bite back half of his smile, and she curls her hands around his. Her skin is warm, comforting, and the way she runs her thumb over his knuckles makes him feel a strange sense of peace. “Better?”

“Thank you, Clarke,” he whispers.

Her smile is nearly enough to lift a world off his shoulders. “Of course, Bellamy.”

It may not seem like much – sitting across from each other in silence, doing little except holding hands – but in that moment, to Bellamy, it feels like everything.

-

They take the rover out on the guise of a patrol, but Clarke knows everyone can see through that lie. (She wishes they couldn’t, mostly because some of the guesses for why she and Bellamy are going out alone still make her face burn.)

The truth is, they felt oddly squeezed in Arkadia that day, and both agreed they could use surroundings that made them feel a little more at home; so it’s no surprise, really, that when Bellamy parks the rover and shuts it off, they’re in front of the ruined gates of the dropship.

What hits them first is the stench. After all this time, Clarke expects the smell of death and ash and ruin to have dissolved, but it still festers madly, clinging to her like a second skin. They step over the scattered piles of bones wild animals have dug through, careful not to disturb anything. _That was a person,_ Clarke thinks, her breath catching. Maybe someone she knew, or could’ve. There a mother, there a sister, there a friend. And she burned all of them.

Bellamy’s fingers brush against hers slightly and she lifts her head to look at him. His expression is caved in, all the emotion he conceals in public on full display because if nothing else, they trust each other with their feelings.

Or most of them, anyway.

Giving him what she hopes is a comforting look, Clarke grasps for his hand and intertwines their fingers tightly. “Let’s keep going,” she says softly, but what she thinks is, _How much of a monster am I, if I’m so relieved they’re dead instead of you?_

He nods and they enter the dropship itself, where they had once screamed at each other about life and death, but where he had also put his hand on her shoulder and said _you don’t need to be here for this._ It was here where their fingers had brushed as she handed him a flask and reveled in the fact he was still alive; where she had stood without him and cried because she thought he was gone; where he had watched over her unconscious body and vowed to protect everyone. So many memories crowd her mind from those days, and the haunting ones after; they threaten to swallow her down. It’s only Bellamy’s fingers clumsily shifting to squeeze her hand and his breath on her hair when he leans into her, all comfort and assurance and companionship, that keeps her grounded.

Once the stale air and old voices become too much for them, they silently slip into the back, behind the fence and just before the trees, where over a dozen graves lie patiently in the settled ground. For a moment, Clarke only stares—she helped dig those graves once; the dirt had clung under her fingernails and in the creases of her skin, and she’d spent hours fruitlessly trying to scrub it away as if the pain would go with it.

“Wells is right there,” she whispers at last, pointing slightly to the stick poking out of the ground, a quiet marker to help her remember.

(As if she could forget.)

Bellamy nods. “And Roma is there. There, that’s Atom. And John. Pascal. Conner.” He points to each spot as he lists off the ones they’ve lost. On a few he can’t quite remember names, but he says what he can think of. “He was one of the first ones to take off his wristband. She had dark hair, long, put up a little like yours. I remember he did part of the fence wrong, and we had to redo a large chunk, and he felt so bad he cried until I could calm him down.”

After he lists everyone, Bellamy squats down in front of the graves, looking thoughtful. She follows suit and leans into him heavily, unable to speak. She’s seen so many people die, she should feel numb to it now, but each loss is still a vicious prick in her heart, a reminder of all she hadn’t been able to do.

“I teased Wells once, when we first met, about having a crush on you,” he admits after a long bout of silence, and Clarke swivels to look at him, bemused. He’s not looking at her, though; he’s looking at Wells. “I’m sorry I treated it like a joke. I’m sorry I treated _you_ like a joke.”

“Wells would’ve liked you,” Clarke murmurs, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Eventually.”

“I already like him, so we’re halfway there.” There’s a long pause, filled with _what if_ and _I wish_ , before Bellamy speaks again, now to Atom. He tells him about Octavia, a little brokenly, how she still burns and burns and burns, and how he would’ve liked Atom to see her become a warrior. He describes the sunsets in Arkadia to Roma, and the strange mutations he’d seen on patrol to Derek. For who knows how long he just talks, half to the dead and half to Clarke, and she just rests against him, eyes closed, and thinks, _I love you, I love you, I love you._

Eventually, Bellamy runs out of words, and she detects his voice beginning to crack. “Sorry I couldn’t do more for you.” 

Clarke lifts her head at that. “You did everything possible, Bellamy. You did good. _We_ did good.” 

“Yeah,” he murmurs, “I know.” But clearly he _doesn’t;_ it’s all too obvious by the way his eyes remain far away and his jaw clenches, and Clarke starts to feel desperate, somehow—desperate for him to know the truth. 

“Can I kiss you?” she blurts before thinking, and he turns to her, blessedly stricken. Awkwardly, she clarifies, “You know, on the...on the cheek.” 

Bellamy smiles a little and nods, but she can see the sadness lingering behind his eyes, in the corners of his mouth. It makes her hesitate for a moment, but then she slowly brings her lips to his cheek, mouth pressed a few inches away from his. He closes his eyes at the same time as her and squeezes her hand, almost painfully. She knows why, and it’s enough to make her want to sob because Bellamy is having to physically stop himself from pulling away from her, Bellamy is fighting back awful images because of her touch, Bellamy is unable to have a simple form of comfort _because of her._

She draws away and rests her forehead against his temple, breathing in and out to calm the stutter-step her heart has fallen into. Slowly, Bellamy’s grip on her hand relaxes, but he doesn’t let go. 

“I won’t leave you again,” she says when the silence thickens around them like a fog. “I’m going to stay with you for as long as you want me, okay? No more running. No more hiding.” 

His slight laugh reverberates against her, they’re so close. “Hope you’re prepared for a long stay, then.” 

“I’ve got a toothbrush and a comb, so I’m all set,” she replies, starting to smile. 

“Finally. You clearly used neither this morning.” 

Clarke laughs and pulls away, standing. “If I can handle your bedhead, you can handle my morning breath.” 

“Deal.” 

They stand there for a few moments longer, not sure where this moment is supposed to lead, before Clarke finally says, “We probably should head home.” 

Bellamy glances out around the old camp, then at her, long and soft. “Already am.” 

She feels her heart melt and lifts up to kiss him on the cheek again, so quickly he barely has time to register it, but when she pulls away he’s actually _smiling,_ and he’s looking at her like he could do it forever, and for the first time in a long time, Clarke actually believes they could be okay. 

\- 

It happens quietly; quieter than Bellamy previously imagined it would in fleeting moments of thought, anyway. He’s sitting at the flickering campfire, trying not to think and doing nothing else, when Clarke finds him; he’s not surprised, even though it’s not even dawn yet. They have a way of finding each other. 

“Hey,” she says, the flames dancing across her face like paint strokes, and he nods by way of greeting. She curls into his side and he wonders, not for the first time, when their touches became habit. He can’t say he’s complaining. 

“Up for any reason?” he asks, though he can already see it in the way her icy blue eyes look cracked and shimmering. 

“The nightmares are still coming.” He can feel the bob of her throat as she swallows against his shoulder. “It was you again. Dying. I killed you.” 

“You didn’t,” he whispers, pressing his face to her hair and running his hand up and down her arm soothingly. “I’m still alive. I’m still with you.” 

“But what if I do?” she says plaintively; her whole body is tense in his arms. 

“You won’t.” 

“You don’t _know_ that,” she argues, though it’s not really him she’s disagreeing with, he knows. 

“I know you’ll never try to, and that’s enough.” He waits for a reply, and when he gets none he adds, “It’s okay to be scared, Clarke, even now. But remember what you told me, okay? No more running. We do things together.” 

“I love you,” she says. 

Bellamy stiffens, sure he’s heard her wrong. “What?” 

Her head lifts and their gazes meet and he’s sure he’s never seen anyone more beautiful. “Bellamy,” she says, and her voice is powerful for how quiet it comes out, “I love you.” 

Slowly, he settles his free hand on her forearm and leans over to touch their foreheads together. He breathes in, breathes out. “I love you, too. But—” 

Clarke’s hands wind around his neck, her fingers playing absently with the curls on the back of his head. If he’s not mistaken, she’s shaking. “But what?” 

A smirk plays at his features. “I sort of expected...I don’t know, fireworks or something. Lights in the sky. Bells ringing.” 

“Well, we already have one of those,” Clarke reminds him playfully, and when they kiss they’re both laughing. 

It’s definitely quieter than he expected—one arm around her shoulder with the other at her waist as she draws lines back and forth across his cheekbones with her thumbs. Her mouth is soft, and her voice is even softer when she murmurs his name, like a declaration. 

“I love you,” he repeats when they pull away, still inches apart and seemingly unable to break eye contact. 

Her smile is warm, much warmer than the fire to their side, and he feels as if he’s melting beneath her hands. “I love you, too,” she says, winding her fingers back into his hair, and after a moment she leans in again, but this time her lips go to his cheek. His hands tighten around her, but for once it’s in surprise, not fear, and he tells her so when she pulls away. 

“You’re learning,” she says, pride palpable in her voice, and pulls him to her. 

He smiles at the feeling of her warm against him, the slip of her nose across his collarbone. “Easy when I’ve got incentive,” he replies, and buries his face in her hair. 

They stay there until morning, and when Clarke kisses his cheek before going to change, Bellamy thinks it feels a little like hope. 

\- 

Clarke walks into the cafeteria with Bellamy by her side, rubbing circles into her palm, and despite all her efforts her heart is pounding. She really shouldn’t be nervous – her friends have been guessing at her and Bellamy for longer than _they_ had, so it’s not really a confession – but she is all the same. 

They sit down across from Raven, who’s eyeing their interlocked hands with definite amusement. She says nothing, though, and the topic goes untouched until Jasper, who has taken to playing with Raven’s hair like he always does when he’s antsy, blurts, “So are you guys a thing or not?” 

Bellamy laughs, and it’s the only thing that keeps Clarke’s face from turning a deep red because he’s actually _laughing,_ something she’s only heard once or twice ever. It makes her heart sing. “Yeah,” he says when his breathing settles, and Clarke leans into him because she knows without turning he’s looking at her. “We’re a thing.” 

“About time,” Raven barks approvingly. “Any longer and I would’ve lost the bet.” She leans back and yells across the room, “Miller! Guess who owes me privileges for two weeks?” 

After that, everyone trickles up to them, asking if they really are together or just congratulating them right away. Clarke endures it, barely, even when her mom gives Bellamy a be-careful-with-my-little-girl talk in front of everyone and he tells her, “Clarke can handle herself. I’m just here because she wants me to be.” 

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Abby says, but she’s smiling. “You definitely need each other.” 

When they finally escape the clutches of curious passerby and slip into Bellamy’s room, Clarke nearly collapses with relief, pressing her lips to his firmly. He’s smiling so much it barely even counts as a kiss, but his fingers are tucking back her hair and his heart is thudding unevenly against hers and it feels like heaven. 

“You did so well out there,” she tells him, half-teasing. “I think you even passed the mom test.” 

“Aced it, probably,” he muses, grinning at her. “Abby looked properly stunned when she walked away.” 

“Yeah, she loves you,” Clarke agrees, pecking him on the mouth again. “But not as much as me.” His eyes sparkle, the way they always do when she tells him she loves him, as if he still can’t believe it; as if each time is the first time, and he gets to fall in love with her all over again. 

She gets the feeling. 

“I love you,” she says again, kissing the corner of his mouth. “I love you.” Her lips go to his nose, then his forehead, then lingering on his cheeks, a declaration punctuating each touch. She kisses him all over his face until he gets almost _giggly,_ and their noses squish together when their lips meet but Clarke doesn’t care, doesn’t care, because all she’s ever wanted for Bellamy is for him to be happy, to find a way to turn the pain into good memories, and they’re getting there. They have a chance. 

A good one. 

**Author's Note:**

> @sherlockvowsontheriverstyx on tumblr :)


End file.
